Old Sandals

Revelation 9:2
And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit.

I don’t know what this means exactly, but it is a picture of great evil. The devil and his demonic hordes, acting in imperceptible yet very real ways, have darkened the earth with their evil designs.

Yet the victory over sin, death and the devil is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ!

In devil’s dungeon chained I lay
The pangs of death swept o’er me.
My sin devoured me night and day
In which my mother bore me.
My anguish ever grew more rife,
I took no pleasure in my life
And sin had made me crazy.

 

Then was the Father troubled sore
To see me ever languish.
The Everlasting Pity swore
To save me from my anguish.
He turned to me his father heart
And chose himself a bitter part,
His Dearest did it cost him.

 

Thus spoke the Son, “Hold thou to me,
From now on thou wilt make it.
I gave my very life for thee
And for thee I will stake it.
For I am thine and thou art mine,
And where I am our lives entwine,
The Old Fiend cannot shake it.”
Martin Luther

 

Revelation 8:1
When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

How ominous this is! Heaven is never silent. The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in mercy. Yet “the Lord is the God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed.”

Revelation 7:17
For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

With reference to all of His creation, God is both transcendent and immanent. But perhaps He is more immanent than He is transcendent. We are told by the Lord himself that the kingdom of heaven is within us. And Paul says our hope of glory is Christ in us. To the Athenian skeptics Paul declared, “[God] is not far from each one of us, for [on the contrary] in Him we live and move and have our being.”

He is the majestic God, and yet he is lowly in heart.  He is the King of Kings, and yet he is the servant of all..  He is the Lamb who shepherds us, and leads us to living fountains of waters.

Revelation 6:15-17
And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

O sinner man, where ya gonna run to?

Revelation 5:9
And [the saints] sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals, for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”

Lord, I want to be in that number—that holy number— of the redeemed and sanctified. Keep me close. Hold on to me. Here’s my heart. O take, and seal it.

Revelation 4:10-11
…the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:

You alone are worthy of praise. No saint in church history would say otherwise. Look at what the elders do with the crowns given to them—they toss them back!

Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.

It is said that opportunity only knocks once. The Lord knocks more than once, at the door of our hearts. First through conscience, again through the hearing of the gospel.

Is God sovereign in our salvation? Faith is indeed a gift, but the divine giving and the human receiving are inextricable; two sides of the same coin. This doesn’t garner for me any glory; boasting is excluded.

Revelation 2:6
But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

According to the writings of the early church leaders, Nicolas (one of the seven original deacons of the church in the book of Acts!) came to teach a doctrine of compromise, implying that total separation between Christianity and the practice of occult paganism was not essential.

Here was a man chosen as a deacon because he was “full of the Holy Spirit”, and yet he fell away.

Doesn’t this call into question the so-called doctrine of eternal security?

Revelation 1:5-6
To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

This truth is in me, it’s all around me, above me, before me, ever after me.

To Him be the glory!

 Jude 1:20-21
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

Keep yourselves in the love of God.  Stay focused.  Remember daily the Lord who bought you at such a great price.

God’s mercy in saving us is like an ever-flowing stream, indeed a river.  It is mercy because we don’t deserve it.  Left to ourselves, we are rebels.  But God has not left us. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

To take this all in is to see produced in us a love for God, and a longing for eternal life. Don’t stop the production.  It is God at work in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.

So fear and tremble, and keep yourselves in the love of God.